World ranking: 8
Last five seasons: 8-8-10-6-6
Date of birth: 21-01-71
Lives: Bearsden, Glasgow
Turned professional: 1990
Ranking tournament victories: 2
Last season’s prize money: £81,504
Career prize money: £1,522,882
Highest tournament break: 143

Alan McManus, WPBSA Young Player of the Year in 1991, took just two seasons to reach the top 16 in the world rankings and has remained there ever since.

The Glaswegian made it through to the last 16 of the Embassy World Championship in his very first season, losing a gripping encounter 13-12 to 1979 world champion Terry Griffiths.

For the next two seasons he made the semi-finals at Sheffield, going down 16-7 to Jimmy White in 1992 and 16-8 to Stephen Hendry in 1993.

McManus has never failed to win his first-round match at the Crucible but for the last seven years, has gone out in round two.

He beat Nigel Bond 10-7 in 2000 but then went down 13-4 to eventual runner-up Matthew Stevens.

He claimed his biggest title to date in 1994, beating Hendry 9-8 in the final of the Benson and Hedges Masters at Wembley to end his Scottish rival’s sequence of 23 consecutive victories.

McManus followed this up by clinching his first world ranking title, defeating Peter Ebdon 9-6 in the final of the 1994 Dubai Classic.

His second ranking success also came overseas in the 1996 Thailand Open in Bangkok.

McManus held his nerve in a series of tight matches, beating Alain Robidoux and James Wattana 5-4, Ebdon 6-5 and Ken Doherty 9-8 in the final.

A member of the Scottish ‘Dream Team’ which triumphed in the 1996 Castrol-Honda World Cup, he has represented his country in the past two Nations Cup.

After a disappointing 1999-2000 season, the ardent Celtic supporter and one-time apprentice mechanic will be aiming to move up a gear this campaign.